Anaconda Plan

The Anaconda Plan was drawn up by General Winfield Scott to end the American Civil War in favor of the North. The plan was adopted in 1862, involving four main parts.

1. Blockade the coast of the South to prevent the export of cotton, tobacco, and other cash crops from the South and to keep them from importing much needed war supplies.
2. Divide the South by controlling the Mississippi River to cut the South off from the west.
3. Divide the South by capturing the Tennessee River Valley and marching through Georgia to the coast.
4. Capture Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America.

Although the plan was devised early in the war, it was derided by several newspapers and was reluctantly adopted by the Union's leaders. The plan as originally conceived by Scott also advised passivity, in that it suggested that once the Southern states were effectively cut off from their resources, the North should wait for capitulation. Nonetheless, the particulars of the Plan were all carried through, the first three proving indeed to be the most decisive factors of the war.

1. Lincoln called for a blockade of the South on April 19th, 1861, six days after the fall of Fort Sumter. The blockade itself, thought to be an impossible task against 3000 miles of highly irregular coastline, was an unparalleled success within the first six months, and nearly impregnable within the first two years. The blockade accounted for the vast increase in the price of cotton abroad and the extreme scarcity of manufactured goods in the South by the end of the war, contributing to the South's defeat. It was the most successful naval blockade to date, and the first one carried out exclusively by the use of a national navy, without employing privateers.
2. Control of the Mississippi would prove decisive in the Civil War as well; Jefferson Davis called Vicksburg the "vital point" of the Confederacy. Although the Eastern Theater was closer to the major centers of population and therefore often drew more attention, the Mississippi represented a major strategic resource that would, if captured by the North, allow for the movement of men and material into the very heart of the South. Ulysses S. Grant's successful Vicksburg campaign effectively cemented Union control of the Mississippi River, and began the slow death knell for the Confederacy.
3. The Tennessee River Valley was also very important to the South. Nashville, Tennessee was served by five railroads during the war, and the state of Tennessee was home to the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers, making it an ideal point for marshalling and distributing resources. Indeed, the South's second largest ironworks was in Clarksville, Tennessee, on the Kentucky border, near a bend in the Cumberland River. As soon as Tennessee voted for secession, the Confederacy began to stockpile weapons and supplies at Nashville, making it the center of distribution and manufacture for Southern war goods of all kinds. They built Forts Henry and Donelson on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, respectively, to protect this important region. However, their defenses did not hold, and after Grant's taking of the garrison at Fort Donelson on February 16, 1862, Southern theater commander Albert Sidney Johnston knew he could no longer hold Nashville and withdrew. The supply depot would remain in Union hands until the end of the war, and was the site of the decisive Battle of Nashville, whence the Confederate General John Bell Hood broke his teeth against the city's defenses in an ill-advised assault and was obliterated by the Union General George Henry Thomas. The loss of Tennessee in general and Nashville in particular dealt a crippling blow to the Confederate cause; if it is true that Lee ventured into Pennsylvania for supplies (which is one of the justifications he made to Jefferson Davis for the raiding action), then he would have never needed do so had the Tennessee Valley remained in Confederate hands, and thus what many have called the "turning point" in the war—the Battle of Gettysburg—would never have happened.
4. Grant occupied Richmond in April of 1865, shortly before the surrender of Lee's Army, but the city had no particular strategic value, serving only as a blow (albeit a heavy one) to Confederate morale.

Despite the attention paid to the Eastern Theater of operations by most historians of the past century-and-a-half (a trend that can be traced to the disproportionate coverage from eastern newspapers and the postbellum writings of Confederate General Jubal Early), it was the Western Theater that figured most prominently in the Anaconda Plan and in the actual defeat of the Confederacy. Without the loss of the Mississippi River and the Tennessee Valley, the supposed vast differences in resources between the Union and the Confederate Armies would have been greatly lessened. It was Grant's successes in the West that brought him to the attention of the President and paved his way for command of the Union forces; if he chose to make his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac, it was only because he rightly perceived that the major work in the West was done, and all that remained was to pin down and finish Lee's army. Indeed, once the West was lost, Lee's defeat became a mere question of time; the "war of attrition" theory so often repeated in discussions of the Civil War holds true only because of the success of the first three points of the Anaconda Plan. Had Lee not been blockaded, or at least still held the Tennessee Valley, he would have had resources enough to drag the war on interminably; quite possibly long enough to force a settlement with the Union.